Japanese PM Shinzo Abe is to announce that he intends to resign, according to senior ruling party officials.
Mr Abe has faced growing calls for his resignation since his Liberal Democrat party lost elections to the upper house of parliament in July.

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Mr Abe, who is seen as a nationalist, took over as prime minister a year ago. At 52, he was Japan's youngest post-war head of government.

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Mr Abe is expected to hold a news conference at 1400 local time (0500GMT).

Pretty surprising. The BBC article doesn't say much, so I ask if anyone knows more about what may have lead to his resignation?

Koizumi was all media show but put forth some rather detrimental policy changes most of the public don't fully understand the consequences of at this time...

Abe's resignation will be couched in relative terms by the Western media with regard to the recent Upper House election but there are really three main reasons he's out today: 1) he failed to take any meaningful action over the crisis that has been afflicting the national pension system since February 2) he has been insistent on maintaining Japan's Indian Ocean refueling program to aid coalition efforts in Afghanistan (a policy virtually nobody in the opposition government and 70% of the public oppose) and 3) he has focused on ideological issues for much of his tenure despite the public's recently fervent appetite for meat and potatoes policymaking.

Coming from a long family line of politicos has left him virtually unable to connect with the common man at all, and it certainly didn't help that in less than a year he presided over the resignation of no less than four hopelessly corrupt cabinet ministers, one of which even committed suicide in disgrace.

If you need someone to blame / throw a rock in the air / you'll hit someone guilty